Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’

The chemical compound for rust is one of the few things I remember from my days in chemistry class; don’t ask me why. At any rate, last night was the first time in days that I had a chance to thoroughly work on TTR. The writing reflected this lack of practice, with my prose bearing a tell-tale layer of red that means, “Consistency, dumbass! Have some.”

Obviously, I need to begin writing every day again, no matter how tired I am when night rolls around. Let’s say… Oh, 1,000 words a day. That should drive me nicely insane.

In other news, I see the light at the end of the tunnel in regards to finishing all this damn classwork. Only three papers left for the entire semester, meaning I should soon have enough time to start posting content on my Projects pages. Oh, and hopefully start a series of articles that has been turning in my mind for a while. Not exactly How-To, although I do hope they’ll be helpful. More like, Here’s What I Discovered, Have At It. I’ve noticed that a lot of worldbuilding articles are very… Well, they give good advice for presenting a world in a story, but they rarely go beyond presenting a superficial view of a world’s framework. Trying to draw a body without understanding how the bones and muscles work underneath the skin, you could say.

I don’t pretend to know the “right way” to build a world; in fact, I don’t believe there is one right way. But I do know that certain things I’ve learned while studying anthropology have also helped me massively in terms of worldbuilding, and there’s a possibility that these things could help other writers as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death, lately. There are a couple of death anniversaries coming up in my family (Now there’s a perfect name for a band if there ever was one. “Death Anniversary.” I’m thinking crust punk), so it’s not surprising. Learning that Pete Steele has passed away doesn’t help, either. So of course the focus of this morbidity turned to how I use death in my writing.

Stories always reflect the perspective of their writers, either consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes the reflection is skewed like a funhouse mirror, but it’s always there. And… I’m a little too matter of fact with the deaths in my projects. In the first draft of TTR, a minor character died every chapter. It was strictly conflict fodder, nothing emotional. Even the death that should have shook up my main character didn’t result in much beyond kickstarting a “MUST HAVE REVENGE!!!” storyline. Sterilizing the emotions that surround a death may work out well in a modern culture that values productivity above all else, but it makes for crap storytelling. One more thing to include on my fix-it list.